David MacMillan

Sir David William Cross MacMillan (born 16 March 1968) is a Scottish chemist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, where he was also the chair of the Department of Chemistry from 2010 to 2015. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Benjamin List "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis". MacMillan used his share of the $1.14 million prize to establish the May and Billy MacMillan Foundation. Education and early life MacMillan was born in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1968 and grew up in nearby New Stevenston. He attended the local state-funded schools, New Stevenston Primary and Bellshill Academy, and credited his Scottish education and Scottish upbringing for his success. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Glasgow, where he worked with Ernie Colvin. In 1990, he left the UK to begin his doctoral studies under the direction of Professor Larry Overman at the University of California, Irvine. During this time, he focused on the development of new reaction methodology directed toward the stereocontrolled formation of bicyclic tetrahydrofurans. MacMillan's graduate studies culminated in the total synthesis of acetate, a eunicellin diterpenoid isolated from the soft coral Eunicella stricta. He earned his Ph.D. in 1996.